The forest kingdom of Abyssinia lies on a high and isolated plateau
lifted above the tropical greenery of equatorial Africa; its slopes are
steep, and its approaches mountainous and difficult. Once arrived on
the heights, the traveller finds himself on a kind of land island with
its own temperature, mountain-top climate, its own forest bred of the
strange union of the fierce equatorial sun and the cool heights, and its
own island people dwelling aloof in space and time. Though dark skinned,
these folk are not negroes, but some Hamitic folk with a strong infusion
of Jewish blood.
Their kingdom is one of the oldest in the world; their rulers claim
descent from a son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba. Converted centuries
ago from primitive Judaism to the Christianity of the African mind, this
singular mingling of the testaments under the sun of Africa produced a
kind of Jewish Christianity unique in the Christian world.
A forest land spread over mountains, a land thronged with black folk
carrying burdens through mountain jungles, a land of lions roaring in
the night, a land of spring rains and flooded water courses, a land of
great feudal nobles clad in bright robes and riding with bare feet in the
stirrup, a land of Biblical blood justice, Christian wonder-workings,
wars and rumours of wars, a land whose sun beat through trees like a vast
and terrible white sword, a land where almost the first thing seen by
Bruce was the stuffed skin of a malefactor swinging from a tree.
The Laird of Kinnaird had arrived at the court of Saul, King of Israel.
It was all there, the battles, the adventure, the death, the colour, and
the cruelty. The head of the state was Ras Michael, governor of Tigre,
the seventy-year-old soldier and intriguer who had assassinated one king,
poisoned another and was now ruling in the name of a third. Like men
coming one after the other to try a feat of strength, great feudal nobles
and confederacies gathered together to thrust him from power; there were
constant battles and new confederacies, and then the slinking hyenas
carrying off human carrion in the night of forest shadows, brilliant
stars and the odour of the battlefield. And in the morning priests,
who wore the robes of the priests of Solomon, marching in company to
sacrifice to the Sun.
The journey from the coast to Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, took
Bruce and his young Italian companion ninety-five days. Both made the
journey wearing white Moorish robes.
Save for three Franciscan friars, of whose fate nothing is known, and of
a certain French surgeon, no European had been seen in Abyssinia for
close upon two hundred years. Bruce’s arrival had a decidedly dramatic
quality. An epidemic of the smallpox had fallen upon the land; the nobles
lay dying; the great houses trembled for their sons. Suddenly at the
end of the caravan road had appeared the tall Laird of Kinnaird in his
character of an observer and wandering physician.
A European and a wise man in their midst! It is the finger of Heaven! An
attendant comes begging him to visit Ras Michael’s son, the young warrior
Ayto Consu, who is dying of the plague.
Into the great dark den of the African palace walks the tall man who
looked the Dey of Algiers squarely in the eye; he hears uneasy breathing
in the half-darkness, and sees a magnificent youth tossing about on a
bed of animal skins. A woman of extraordinary beauty and stateliness
approaches; it is the Ozoro Esther, old Ras Michael’s young wife, and
young mother of the warrior lad. This Biblical queen, this great lady of
the ancient court of Israel, was to be Bruce’s unfailing friend and kind
protectress.
Bruce opens the doors and windows, fumigates the rooms with incense and
myrrh, and washes them with vinegar and warm water. The young prince
passes the crisis of the plague, and lives.
The incident gives Bruce a name and a place. He is no longer the unknown
European, but Yagoube, which is James,—Yagoube the physician, counsellor,
and spring of secret wisdom. Slaves bring him new and clean clothes in
the fashion of Gondar the capital. “My hair was cut round, curled and
perfumed in the Amharic fashion, and I was thenceforward in all outward
appearance a perfect Abyssinian.” From this day on, he will be a noble
of the Abyssinians, he will ride with them, surprise them with his
marksmanship, and follow them to battle with the wild, half-negro tribes.
He found the rôle of physician counsellor a congenial one, and carried
it through with the best of humour. He thus described his visit to a
young Abyssinian princess; the account and the humour of it are very
characteristic of the man.
“The young patient being brought forward, soon after, one of the slaves,
her attendant as in a play, pulled off the remaining part of the veil
that covered her. I was astonished at the sight of so much beauty ...
the rest of her dress was a blue shift which hung loosely about her and
covered her down to her feet, though it was not very rigorously nor very
closely disposed all below her neck. She was the tallest of the middle
size, and not yet fifteen years of age, her whole features faultless....
Such was the beautiful Aiscach, daughter of the eldest of the ladies I
was then attending.
“If Aiscach was ill,” said her mother, “you would take better care of
her than of either of us.” “Pardon me,” said I, “Madam, if the beautiful
Aiscach was ill, I feel I should myself be so much affected as not to be
able to attend her at all!”
A scuffle with a kinsman of Ras Michael’s led to a feat which became the
talk of Abyssinia.
In the king’s house, Bruce sat discussing the merits of gunnery with
Guebra Mascal, a kinsman of the royal house. The Abyssinian, somewhat the
worse for drink, took exception to something Bruce had said.
“He said I was a Frank and a liar,” Bruce recounted, “and on my
immediately rising up, he gave me a kick with his foot. I was quite blind
with passion, seized him by the throat, and threw him on the ground,
stout as he was.” Guebra Mascal then wounded Yagoube slightly with his
knife, but the giant Scot wrested the knife from his antagonist and beat
him with the handle.
Any disorder in the king’s house being punishable by death, all present
felt uneasy. Steps were taken to hush up the incident, but in some manner
the story reached the ears of the king. The Abyssinian, as the aggressor,
was summoned to the throne.
“What sort of behaviour is this my men have adopted with strangers?”
cried the king. “And with _my_ stranger, too, and in the king’s
palace.... What! am I dead? or become incapable of governing longer?”
Matters seemed about to take an ill turn. At this Bruce became alarmed,
for he was as generous spirited as he was courageous. Hastening to the
palace, he pleaded with the offended king for the life of Guebra Mascal,
and managed to save his life; yet the man long remained his bitter enemy.
The king, however, apparently continued to ponder on the affair, for
presently he sent for the tall physician.
“Yagoube,” said the king, “did you soberly say to Guebra Mascal that an
end of a tallow candle, in a gun in your hand, would do more execution
than an iron bullet in his?”
Said Bruce—“Will piercing the table on which your dinner is served (it
was of sycamore, about three-quarters of an inch thick) at the length of
this room be deemed a sufficient proof of what I advanced?”
“Ah, Yagoube,” said the king, “take care what you say.”
Now follows an odd scene. Yagoube the stranger calls for a gun, and under
the eagerly curious eye of the king and some attendants loads it with
half of “a farthing candle.” Slaves then bring forth three stout battle
shields of toughest and thickest bull hide, and set them one behind the
other. One feels the incredulity, the sense of something miraculous about
to happen, even the little touch of awe.
Now comes quiet, the aiming of the gun, a crash, and a palace room full
of pungent powder smoke. Yagoube’s half of a farthing candle has pierced
all three shields. Then comes the turning on its side of the royal table,
and another roar; the candle has passed through the table top!
The principle involved is a simple matter of physics, but such learning
of the devil had not yet arrived in Abyssinia. The prestige which
Yagoube’s height, composed manner, and well-born air had already won
for him was enormously increased. The old Ras presently heard of it,
and begged the tall physician to repeat his miracle. “Magic!” said the
Abyssinian priests, yet bore their guest no ill will; the exploit was
visible proof of the world by which they lived.
Bruce now brought to light the mission which had really led him to
Abyssinia. He was in search of the source of the Blue Nile, the true Nile
of the ancients. The other half of the mystery, the source of the White
Nile, the Nile of the inundations, apparently did not stir the eighteenth
century mind, and it was not till 1856, when Burton and Speke arrived
at the great Nyanza lakes, that the true source of the floods became
known to modern Europeans. There is interesting evidence that the Romans
possessed the secret, for Nero sent “two centurions” up the river, who
returned with the report that it arose amid “great lakes.”
Yagoube’s notion of “going to see a river and a bog, no part of which
he could take away” seemed incomprehensible to his hosts, and they were
very loath to let him go into the wild, half-hostile hinterland. Coming
to some realisation that his friend’s wish to reach the ancient river was
the ambition of his life, the king solemnly invested Yagoube Bruce, the
Laird of Kinnaird, with the feudal overlordship of the district of Geesh
in which the springs of the Nile arose.
The road between the capital and his fief was a dangerous one, for it
wound through the territories of a quasi-independent native prince named
Fasil, and this prince was hostile to the then rulers of Abyssinia. Would
not Yagoube, their friend, remain with them in the safety of the capital?
Bruce, however, rose to the challenge to his courage and resolution.
Now comes an encounter with Fasil, and the refusal of the chieftain
to let the laird pass. But Yagoube wins in the end, by captivating
the savage with feats of gunnery and horsemanship. Presently Fasil,
completely won, brings Bruce a present of a fine, loose, muslin garment
fit for an African lord, and a handsome grey horse.
“Take this horse,” said the chieftain; “do not mount it, but drive it
before you, saddled and bridled as it is.”
On into the forest goes the tall laird; the savages flee before the
chief’s horse, and fall down before it. On the second of November, 1770,
James Bruce arrives at the Blue Nile.
He stood on the brink of a steep hill, and saw the springs of the river
below, and the river flowing away as a brook that had “scarcely water to
turn a mill.” Hurrying pell-mell down the steep hillside, and falling
twice as he ran, Bruce “the Abyssinian” reached the welling flood. In his
hand he carried a large coconut shell which he had carried with him from
Arabia, and this he filled with Nile water, and tossed off to the health
of King George.
“I was arrived at the source of the Nile,” he wrote, “through numberless
dangers and sufferings the least of which would have overwhelmed me but
for the continual goodness and protection of Providence. I was, however,
but then half through my journey, and all those dangers which I had
already passed awaited me again on my return. I found a despondency
gaining ground fast upon me, and blasting the crown of laurels I had too
rashly woven for myself.”